


Hope Like a Stranger

by opalemeraldcat



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: (canon-compliant for now), Campaign 2, Canon-Compliant, Coping, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Grief, post episode 26, post major character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 22:10:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15301113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalemeraldcat/pseuds/opalemeraldcat
Summary: The loss is achingly fresh for all of them. But Caleb has already pitched his life toward a million-to-one chance.





	Hope Like a Stranger

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for episode 26, immediate aftermath. I'd love to know more about what's going through Keg's head, but she's not the focus.
> 
> Titled on my own, to reflect the dispositions of the three who are left, but found a song by Bob Bennett titled it afterward; it's quite nice.

Caleb hadn’t seen it. He’d heard Lorenzo calling something over the battlefield, and Keg calling out too, desperate, all the armor around her voice gone. “Let this be a lesson.” “Make me the lesson!” He’d gotten up, still focused on the half-elf woman, hands holding the magical spark of scorching rays. Then the barbarian had run straight at him, and Nott far behind her, eyes wide and alone, nothing to show from the cart, nothing to show for their plan… And then even Beau, her face a mask of rage and fear, ran… Then the barbarian wrestled down her rage at Lorenzo’s command, and Lorenzo shoved Keg over, who looked numb, and pushed her down in front of them. He saw the awful look in Keg’s eyes, and a different one in Beau’s, and Nott ran up to him and grabbed his coat and hid half her face. Caleb knew they’d lost. 

Lorenzo whispered in Keg’s ear, then kicked her forward onto her face. Not an execution, then. Something worse. But they couldn’t have stopped him if he’d wanted them torn apart and put on stakes. He knew it, now they knew it. Lorenzo patted out the flames on his armor, then sauntered away. The carts moved forward, revealing the body. And then Caleb knew what they’d lost.

While they all stood or lay there, breathing and waiting for the wagons to get further away, more of his multicolored coat soaked up the red. When Caleb got there, striding, then jogging, despite Nott’s murmurs, he saw the tiefling’s eyes were still open. His face was still but Caleb searched it anyway.

“We underestimated them,” Beau said roughly. She was half-facing them, half keeping an eye on the enemies leaving.

“Ja,” Caleb said.

“We need to leave!” Nott said. She stepped up to Molly, her hands over him, trembling. She finally knelt by his head and tugged some of his jewelry. 

Keg said nothing., and Caleb wondered if his sudden hatred for her—the personification in a stranger of their failed knowledge, overconfidence, and refusal to admit their vulnerability—would pass. Probably. He had practice hating quietly.

Nott was quietly pulling at some of his jewelry. Her long ears were low-set, her mouth curled down. When Beau looked at her, she said defensively, almost tearfully, “He would want Jester to have them, or—or someone. He wouldn’t want all of him left here.”

“I wasn’t stopping you.”

“We are…leaving him?” Caleb said, helplessly. Fire, not flesh. Cleverness, not strength. He didn’t have what they needed. Besides, perhaps, being a survivor. No matter what, he kept going. But what was that worth, when everything fell away from you? He might as well be a walking skeleton, expressionless, pulseless.

The caravan was out of sight. Beau put her staff over her back and squatted to look at Molly. After a minute, she broke away, and walked over to Keg, who was standing, staring blankly forward. Beau put her hand on her arm and muttered something like Fjord might say.

As Nott silently moved some of the jewelry off—it tinkled slightly, over the unmoving face—and Beau held Keg’s arm, Caleb stood there, not touching anything. Remembering the night before, a cold night, with Nott on his outside, Molly in the middle of the pile. Remembering something that had seemed half-dream, only his mind would not have given it to him. A hand tipped in long, hard nails absentmindedly stroking the top of his head, and the unstilled response of rolling closer, not just for warmth. A moment his fading consciousness had not even shivered at, with a sort of peace akin to what the dodecahedron had given him.

His eyes flickered to the haversack for a second.

“Caleb,” said Beau. His eyes flickered up to her. “Are you gonna be okay?”

She really was improving. Götter, it was only the three of them now, wasn’t it? The night before he had berated himself for his sentiment toward the jerk, the liability, the walking rainbow… Was this a sign he should leave? Maybe even without Nott. Walk on, bloodless.

But that voice didn’t sound like sanity to his madness, like it often did. In this shock, he could feel the nature of that demon, though it twisted away from him. And it just felt like fear. 

He had more productive things to think of than that.

Beau watched him. She was surprised when he reached out toward her and pulled her toward him. It was a better hug than last time, even without their mentors. Nott hovered, until Caleb moved and picked her up and pulled her in too. The three of them stood there for a while, squeezing each other, heartbeats growing slower, and closer in time.

“I can ride with his body,” Beau said as they broke apart. “He at least shouldn’t be left in the woods without a proper grave. He wouldn’t like that. Again.” She glanced over, then back. 

“Danke, Beau.” Caleb was silent for a moment, but the others knew he was only pausing. After a second, he said, quietly, “Did I ever tell you what I was looking for in the library?”

“Back in Zadash? No.”

“I think I should tell you. No, yes, I will tell you.

“It was Time.”

He went quiet again, for some seconds. Nott was listening quietly, not showing any surprise. “Gods are not my path. But I will be powerful one day—if I am very, very careful, and I read many books, and go to strange places, and my friends are patient with me. And then, there is a chance that I can change things that have already happened.” A pause. “I decided to live on that chance.”

Beau scrubbed one hand’s heel over her eye and nodded a few times. Nott said, “I think that Molly would take that bet, Caleb.”

“Ah, I hope so." Almost a smile. “I think we can carry him together, to the horse. Do you think?”

"Yeah, yeah,” Beau said, smoothing her hand wrappings. Nott nodded her head quickly, and Caleb nodded once, slow.

And even though it was only the three of them—the scared, drunk thief, the callous ex-brat, and the broken, dirty man—they managed.


End file.
